CrossCurrents: Gardening As Social-Spiritual Practice

Many of us love gardening: being outside, assisting in acts of creation, enjoying the beauty of fresh flowers, and becoming ecstatic over those first glimpses of new growth in the spring. At the same time, small-scale farming and local gardening can be activities for alternative socio-political action, as community gardens help people take some control of their own food sources, invest us with a sense of dignity, and create public spaces for communities. Contributions to this special issue include attention to practices of the body, social justice initiatives, personal spiritual betterment, alternative spaces, community building, and more. Essays mix the personal and the political, the spiritual and the social, contributing to ways we might think through gardening practices in light of religious renewal, social justice, and public futures.

In the December 2023 issue of CrossCurrents:

• “Gardening as Social-Spiritual Practice” by Johan Roeland

• “Gardening Without a Garden” by Kathryn Reklis

• “Queer Gardens” by Joost Emmerik

• “Planting by Faith: A Hopi Farmer’s Perspective” by Michael Kotutwa Johnson

• “Unsettled: On Learning to Honor Powerful Strangers in an ‘Immigrant World’” by Meghann Ormond

• “Terra-Therapy or, Growing Deep Peace” by Jon Pahl

• “The Slow Garden: Gardening as Deceleration” by Johan Roeland

• “Children of Space” poetry by Row Light

• “Ebony G. Patterson at the New York Botanical Garden: Enter Vultures” review by Irina Sheynfeld

• “Shenila Khoja-Moolji, Rebuilding Community: Displaced Women and the Making of a Shia Ismaili Muslim Sociality” review by Sahir Dewji

• “Hadia Mubarak, Rebellious Wives, Neglectful Husbands: Controversies in Modern Qur’anic Commentaries” review by Nura Sophia Liepsner

• “Theresa A. Yugar, Sarah E. Robinson, Lilian Dube, and Teresia Mbari Hinga, eds. Valuing Lives, Healing Earth: Religion, Gender, and Life on Earth” review by Telesia Musili